Wow. What a weekend.

I'm going on about 2 hours sleep... and have officially made the switch from adrenaline to caffeine, so this will be short and sweet!!

I'm sure a lot of you storm lovers are a bit disappointed today because Bill didn't quite live up to expectations, however for myself, I still think the stats are quite impressive given how quickly Bill came and went.

Here are the numbers.

Unofficial precipitation totals for the event:
Gander........................ 71 mm
Winterland.................... 63 mm
Port aux Basques.............. 57 mm
St. Lawrence.................. 45 mm
Burgeo........................ 43 mm
St. John's.................... 40 mm
* Lethbridge.................. 39 mm
Argentia...................... 31 mm
Terra Nova park............... 30 mm
Bonavista..................... 27 mm
Wreckhouse.................... 25 mm

* observation from volunteer climate station.

Unofficial peak wind gusts:
Cape Race.................. 131 km/h
Cape pine.................. 121 km/h
Sagona Island.............. 102 km/h
Marticot island............ 100 km/h
St. Lawrence............... 96 km/h
Argentia................... 94 km/h
Grates Cove................ 93 km/h
Bonavista.................. 91 km/h
Winterland................. 83 km/h
St. John's................. 80 km/h
Burgeo..................... 78 km/h
Port aux Basques........... 78 km/h
Wreckhouse................. 70 km/h
Gander..................... 59 km/h
Terra Nova park............ 57 km/h
La Scie.................... 56 km/h

So why didn't Bill hit us as hard as we thought he might.

1) The "rear end" fell out of him. As Hurricane Bill moved North along the South coast of Nova Scotia yesterday afternoon, you could already see the back half of him kind of fade out on the Satellite as he moved into cooler waters. By the time he moved into Newfoundland, he was front end heavy in terms of the rainfall... with not much trailing in behind.

2) The speed of the Storm. Bill picked up steam very quickly last evening. He made landfall at Point Rosie on the Burin Peninsula around midnight and picked up more speed. Based on the radar I would say the centre of the storm was into the North Atlantic again, sometime in the 4 am hour. Even if Bill was front end heavy, had he been tracking as slow as he did in the Maritimes, I think our rainfall totals would be higher. Gander picked up 70 mm, most of which fell in a 4 or 5 hour period.

ONE LAST QUESTION
So there one last question that remains. Was Bill a Hurricane or a Tropical Storm when he made landfall on the Burin? Well, that's still yet to be determined. Here's the word from Environment Canada this afternoon.

"The strength of the storm was on the Boundary between a strong tropical storm and a hurricane ... With
sustained winds between 110 and 120 km/h at landfall. A post analysis is planned to determine its exact strength when it made landfall ... but early indications are that it was below hurricane strength."

You can read the entire Canadian Hurricane Centre Final Statement on Bill here.

A Final Word
One final note today, I would like to thank everyone who stopped by the blog this weekend and for your comments as well. I really appreciate it. The blog is a fantastic tool to help get information out quickly and you folks proved it this weekend with close to 20,000 hits!!!

Awesome stuff. Thanks again.

Ryan